Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
